Video: In order to serve fugu (pufferfish) in Japan, a chef needs to have a special licence. That's because fugu is poisonous, toxic and lethal. So why would someone eat something that could kill you? Because when prepared properly, it's safe to eat and delicious. Watch chef Sasaki, a fugu specialist for over 45 years, prepare his fugu dish.

Amber delivers a slice of ancient life, showing us everything from early predation to the earliest preserved erect penis. Now, in a 30-year-old amber collection, scientists have found the earliest ancestor of those famous drawing-room mystery poisons, strychnine and curare.

Given that humans have been using lead in various products for over 8000 years (with the first known mining of it in Anatolia around 6500 BCE), you might be surprised to learn that we have known that lead is dangerous and shouldn't be trifled with since at least 150 BC. Here is everything you need to know about this metal poison.

Toxicologists have a saying that "the dose makes the poison", meaning that anything and everything can kill you in large enough quantities. So here we take five incredibly common (and usually benign) foods and household items to their illogical conclusion. Ever contemplated eating 480 bananas? Don't do it.

Take a look at these fascinating videos explaining the many horrible ways that animals can use their hollow fangs, grooved teeth, lip glands, claws, spurs, spines, stings and tentacles to deliver venom for the sole purpose of paralysing and killing other animals — including humans.

Poison can be a curse, a killer, and even a medicine — an alchemical substance that appears in everything from myth to literature. You might not think of poison as being this multifaceted, but that's exactly what the American Museum of Natural History's new exhibit — The Power of Poison — delightfully urges you to do.

Should you have happened to find yourself dining with Bulgarian royalty 700 years ago and the wine tasted a bit off, you would have been smart to put the goblet down. Bulgarian archaeologists have just discovered a medieval bronze ring explicitly designed to poison political foes — in the most discreet way possible.

Think twice before stomping the lights out of the next cockroach you come across — you're going to want them to return the favour after the takeover. Thanks to new research on this most vexatious blight of mankind, we can now say more or less definitively that the despised cockroach will, in fact, come to rule us all. Because, apparently, they're developing the ability to outsmart our attempts at poisoning them dead.

As this slick educational short from the SciShow explains, you've got two choices when it comes to treating deadly, deadly snake bites: you can either hopefully make it to a hospital in time to counter the toxins with dozens of expensive vials of delicate anti-venom, or you can slowly inoculate yourself against their effects — effectively turning yourself into a poison-immune mobile anti-venom factory.

There are plenty of reasons to be thankful that you don't live in the early 1900s (child labour laws, air conditioning, what have you). But just in case you've been feeling nostalgic for simpler times, new research from the University of Detroit Mercy should put those wistful fantasies to rest.

You might notice the sting of the injection. Within seconds you'd realise you're having trouble moving your eyes and fingers, followed by your arms and legs. If you were standing, you'd collapse. In a heap on the floor, you'd realise nearly every muscle in your body was paralysed.

This is really bad: a man hit with a poisonous umbrella in a street of Hannover, Germany, has died after a long struggle in the hospital. It sounds like a James Bond movie, except that it's real and it sucks. This is what happened.

Transporting toxic gas in glass containers aboard a train sounds like something from a hurriedly written action movie, but no, it's real life. And it's particularly real life for Chelyabinsk, Russia, which now have a cloud of bromine floating above it.

The toxic red sludge spill in Hungary that killed four people on Monday could take a year to clean up, authorities there said. Meanwhile, workers are still trying to stop the spill from spreading to the Danube and Raba rivers.

A small dose of hydrogen sulphide gas put this little guy into a state of suspended animation for six hours. If the technique can scale up to humans, it could buy doctors valuable time in emergency situations.

When it comes to consumer technology, Australia is generally months behind the rest of the world. When a new gadget arrives here in Australia, the rest of the world has generally forgotten all about it.

Well, according to News.com.au, there's now another technology we're behind the rest of the world in: dealing with e-waste. Apparently we are "coming last" when it comes to recycling and reusing our old technology, and the government's dragging its heels when it comes to coming up with any meaningful legislation to improve the situation.

Most disappointing though is that most of the western world still believes that dealing with e-waste is as simple as shipping old mobile phones and CRT TVs to third world countries - places like Delhi and Nigeria - so they can disassemble them. The problem is that they have no means for protection against all the toxic substances inside our gadgets, and when these substances are released, they generally end up poisoning someone or something.

Hit the link for the full article - it's a cause for great concern for any real gadget fan in Australia.